Georgia National Guard Responds to Water Crisis

Courtesy Photo | In this 1956 photo, Georgia Army National Guard Soldiers of the Atlanta-based 201st Ordnance Company load water pipe in response to a water crisis in Loganville. Four years later, the unit would respond to a water crisis in Unadilla. Georgia Guard Archives.  

ATLANTA, GEORGIA, UNITED STATES

03.19.2020

Story by Maj. William Carraway 

Georgia National Guard

What would happen if a town in Georgia was suddenly without water? This was the situation that confronted the citizens of Unadilla Georgia sixty years ago this month and the Georgia National Guard Soldiers who sped to their rescue.
On the morning of March 24, 1960, the 1,200 residents of Unadilla Georgia, an agricultural community approximately 45 miles south of Georgia went about their normal routine showering for work and filling glasses of water for breakfast. Within hours that routine was plunged into uncertainty with the collapse of the town’s water system. With the well yielding an undrinkable sandy mixture, city officials requested assistance. Receiving the call, the Georgia National Guard dispatched the 201st Ordnance Company from Atlanta. The 201st loaded trucks with pumps and pipe while in Columbus, Engineers of the 560th Armored Engineer Battalion dispatched Soldiers and vehicles to transport tanks and filtration systems.
Citizen Soldiers from Columbus and Atlanta converged on the scene in Unadilla and were joined by officials from the Georgia Department of Health. Working through the morning of March 25, the Soldiers installed a pump and filtration system to provide the citizens of Unadilla with drinking water while the Ga. DPH and other Guardsmen worked with city officials to repair. The units had responded to a similar water crisis in Loganville four years earlier, and Columbus Engineers set up the sediment retention tanks and filtration systems while the 201st Ordnance Company installed more than half a mile of pipe.
By 3:00 the morning of March 25, the first pump became operational and by dawn, a second pump was providing drinking water for the city. The Guardsmen remained on duty in Unadilla until March 29, when the city was able to the production capability of an older city well.

• Date Taken: 03.19.2020
• Date Posted: 03.19.2020 17:15
• Story ID: 365544
• Location: ATLANTA, GEORGIA, US
• Hometown: UNADILLA, GEORGIA, US